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Pennsylvania Court Forces ISPs to Block Porn Sites
jkastner writes "Salon is reporting that Pennsylvania is forcing ISPs to block web sites that have child porn. While we can all agree that child porn is bad, this sort of approach starts us down a slipperly slope. If one site slips through, does that make the ISP liable? In addition, the court ordered blocking may prevent access to legitimate sites that are hosted on the same server."
This means that there will be more bandwidth available when we surf for pr0n, since all those kinky amish won't be able to go there too!!!
If only there were a way to do away with the evil without blatantly treading into unConstitutional waters... Unfortunately, there are plenty of Legislators who are salivating at the chance to use this precedent for their own agendas. I doubt this decision will be upheld, and as far as YOU know, I'm a fancy-pants Law-Talkin guy...
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
It's wacky that courts can order companies to do things, and not suggest ways of doint it.
This wouldn't be news if the court had listed the sites it wants blocked. Let the court make the distinction between allowed and not allowed once, instead of making every single ISP make those choices.
Kind of like a court saying, "Hey, <INSERT POWER COMPANY HERE> you have to start using fusion power next year."
How do they block it without knowing what the sites are?
If they know where the sites are, why haven't they been shut down?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
...of sites to be blocked. I worked at an ISP and at one time a rather irate customer wanted all of a certian kind of pr0n blocked. We simply asked for a list of all those sites that they wanted blocked. This simply made them go away...
What I'd like to know is how they expect the ISP's to know what sites do and don't have child pornography on them. I mean we've had software on the market for years to block regular porn, and look how effective that's been. This kind of thing is just not the realm of the judiciary, or even the legislature. PA's always been stupid on stuff like this, I believe there was some previous ruling/bill about blocking access to obscene material which cause standard porno boilerplate to add "if you live in PA" alongside "if you're a minor" in a number of cases. I'm not dissing pennsylvania, I live here, but the old adage about PA being Philly and pittsburgh with alabama in between is really quite true
So this means that ISP's will have to pay for a boatload of Websense or Surfcontrol or something similar licenses? That sucks. That means Internet fees are going to go WAY up for people that are paying to use those ISPs.
I understand that people that run businesses online can't afford to be so blase, but hey. I'm just a turd with a website.
When there really is a slippery slope, it isn't a fallacy, despite what a minimal education in logic and argument might have told you.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Is a picture of a 2 year old in the bathtub on a family website 'child porn'? It IS a picture of a naked child. And some kiddie porn purveyors would salivate over it.
Yes, child porn is bad. So intensely bad that the website owners need to be hung up by their testicles, and then drawn and quartered.
But...let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the webhost can be identified, and the website known....why are we not going after the website owner/designer?
Don't just block it....put the ass in jail.
take the term "slippery slope" the way it is meant, not a study in logical deduction with certainty. you know what the poster meant. and he's right. allowing ISPs (or even legally binding them) to control the content layer flies in the face of the end-to-end design that the Internet was built with.
You'll see that the state of PA orders companies that use virtual hosting to shut down the child porn sites that're on the same IP as other, legitimate sites.
"Connolly, the spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general, said Wednesday that in such cases involving a Web site with a shared address, authorities contact the Web-hosting companies and order them -- under threat of legal action -- to pinpoint and shut down the illegal pornographic sites."
I think there's still some question about exactly how they're enforcing this law, and as the article says, attorneys are requesting information from the PA Attorney General.
There's no good excuse for child porn, and while this law (and therefore method) may not be the way to go about it, it's a start.
Is the ISP responsible if their users are surfing thru anonymizers or redirectors?
... and who gets to draw it?
What if they download that child porn via FastTrack or Gnutella?
Where is the line drawn
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
"Connolly, the spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general, said Wednesday that in such cases involving a Web site with a shared address, authorities contact the Web-hosting companies and order them -- under threat of legal action -- to pinpoint and shut down the illegal pornographic sites."
So Pennsylvania authorities are going to call a Web-hosting company in Denmark and threaten legal action? In addition to being silly, I think that also violates US law. Foreign policy is the domain of the federal government.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Personally, I feel this is entirely the wrong approach. Someone hosts child porn and you just have the ISP block them? I'm pretty sure that in the US hosting a page that contains child porn is illegal... One shouldn't just block them, they should be tried in a court and if found guilty sent to jail. Blocking the site is not the answer at all, especially when you could be taking a legitimate site off the net at the same time.
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I looked at the link which described a "slipperly" slope, but fail to see how this points out a fallacy in the logic?
Basically all it does is define it, and clarify that: "..are not (as in the case of deductive logic) 100% absolutely certain." Well duh.
It gives some examples of where it didn't work out, or strawman examples of it taken to the extreme. This is not the same as showing the logic has a fallacy.
s/slippery slope/incrementalism/
Does that make you happy?
As documented in your citation, slippery slope is an informal fallacy that rests on uncertainty in the premises in what is otherwise a deductively valid argument. It would make the debate more productive, if not easier, if you would address the premises rather than regurgitating your first semester logic course.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Pennslyvania needs to provide ISPs a list of websites it says contains child porn. It's not an ISP's job to determine what is and isn't child porn. It's only job should be to block it if the state deems something child porn. You can't just go off enabling filters that filter out key words like child porn, etc without disabling other legitimate websites. In fact, that article itself on ISP's filtering child porn would probably be marked as a child porn site and thus filtered.
Ah, nevermind I'll stop beating the horse.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Is it a grammatical error to just make up a word?
My other sig is extremely clever...
So how do they intend to block such sites?
Scanning emails for spam is pretty easy, all the mail comes into your server. Blocking websites is a lot harder, you will need a transparent proxy with lots of rules or a list of sites to block. User changes their DNS server and uses a third party proxy and voila, no more blocked sites.
Shouldn't there be a crucial 'child' typed right after 'block'?
In addition, the court ordered blocking may prevent access to legitimate sites that are hosted on the same server.
I don't think policies like this are meant to actually block 100% of the targeted sites, but simply to make them as unaccessible as possible. If such a targeted site is found to not be blocked I'm sure all it takes is reporting it to the ISP and it will be added to the block list.
What I'm curious is if something like this will start going to other levels like P2P and newsgroups, where ISPs have to block any file or newsgroup that matches in a list of keyword regexp that denote child porn, I know RCN, my ISP, already does it for newsgroups.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
This is not a bad idea, I don't think the blocking is the problem - why not close down the sites completely? Are there really any countries out there that wouldn't cooperate on such a task? Maybe blocking is a strategy to log which users visit these sites and keep them under surveillance?
.au the govt with Telstra have a list of sites that are collected (porn sites) that are listed as banned sites for visiting during work hours (within govt). Visiting such a site that is listed as banned gets you logged and then you need to have a good explaination as to why you shouldn't be fired. Once hotmail.com was listed and all hell broke lose - "I can't read my mail", although I wouldn't call reading hotmail mail as being work constructive.
In
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
The post makes it sound like some judge woke up one morning and decided to order blocking. That's not quite the case. The Pennsylvania legislature passed a law requiring such blocks. Since county courts (in most states; I assume PA is similar in this respect) do not have the power to declare a law unconstitutional, the judge has no choice but to order the blocking.
Ultimately this is a good thing. The order gets appealed to (the PA equivalent of) a state court, which will (as those tend to lack the power to declare a law unconstitutional) uphold the county ruling. Once a state court issues an order, then the (PA equivalent of the) state Supreme Judicial Court would be able to take an appeal and (finally) declare the law unconstitutional (especially if the PA Constitution has a free speech clause).
"In addition, the court ordered blocking may prevent access to legitimate sites that are hosted on the same server."
Transparent Squid proxies - block by hostname not by IP. If they decide to cache too, it can also help the ISP with their bandwidth bill.
Of course this would depend on the courts providing a nice plain list of kiddie pr0n URLs...
This may be unconstitutional as it may put too much of a burden on interstate commerce.
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Paul Barman is really Prince Paul. Have you ever seen them together?
If you could be anything you want, I'll bet you'd be disappointed.
Empowering an ISP to block certain content is to blatantly go against the end-to-end design which the Internet was built on. It is a slippery slope indeed. Setting a precedent like this is to give the courts the ability (i.e. and high powered self interest lawyers of corporations) to CONTROL the content layer of the Internet. Porn is bad. No doubt. But is a historical image gallery of lynchings in the American South ? Is the image of Jesus in a jar of urine ? How about a website that criticizes Republicans ? Democrats ? Catholics ? Jews ? Controlling the access to certain content should exist as the ENDS of the network, not the network itself.
Did anyone else hear 'Thriller' playing during that post?
I keep saying 'Pedophilia' instead of 'Philadelphia.'
Read any good sonnets lately?
Is it not possible to argue that child porn is a bad thing, socially unacceptable, with devastating consequences for innocent lives. Therefore if the constitution has some kind of loophole which permits child porn, perhaps there is something wrong with the constitution? Guys, lots of us are software engineers here. If the specification for your project is causing massive problems, consider getting the spec changed!
Don't get me wrong. The constitution was a wonderful thing back in the eighteenth century and a vast improvement not only on its predecessors but its sucessors too in many ways. I'm just baffled how so many folks in the USA act as though the constitution was handed on tablets of stone from Mount Sinai by Founding Fathers who were acting in some infallible capacity.
Not a troll, just curious. And yes, I live in a land with no constitution, cameras on every street corner, and elective dictatorship and bad dentistry blah blah blah. Before you tell me what's so bad about my world, please satisfy my curiosity about yours.
Thank you for pointing out the exact fallacy in your logic. It makes debate so much easier when you opponent strikes themselves down.
The slipperly slope in this case is that ISPs will be made ever more responsible for the content they carry. But the phone company and the post office aren't responsible for what their infrastructure is used to deliver. Why should the web be a special case?
How about, rather than blocking childporn sites, which requires ISPs to know who the offending sites are, you make legislation that if an ISP finds childporn, they are required to report it?
How are ISPs supposed to enforce this law? If I were a small or medium-sized ISP, and I were starting or contemplating doing business in Pennsylvania, I'd cancel the plans. There's way too much at risk, and if authorities themselves can't track down and properly prosecute paedophiles, they shouldn't force ISPs to do such or possibly face prosecution, when all they're doing is running a legitimate business of connecting people to the largest public network in the world...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Read the page pointed to by your own damn link.
If you would read your page, you would see that it is giving a name to a number of arguments. These arguments / statments are called "slippery slope" statments. Saying that an action would put people in a percarious situation is not false: "This sort of approach starts us down a slipperly slope." A "slippery slope" is a metaphore for a dangerous position. It is not false for the writer of that statment to say he/she feels the approach would put people in said dangerous situation.
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We won't know until the state discloses the info, but this seems very much like an "enabling" law. Basically one that is not meant to be enacted proactively, instead it enables an action to occur. Basically, if I complain to an isp that www.whatever.com has kiddie porn, then they are compelled by the law to block access to it, vs throwing up their hands and saying "well just don't surf there". I would assume that unless the state is going to come out with a "banned sites" list that all isp's use, that this is the way the law will be enforced.
I don't know why people are asking questions about jurisdictions since this law does not seem to address the hosting of these sites, just peoples access to them. And it looks like the counter argument is focused on the fact that the law requires the blocking based on ip vs url, thereby possibly blocking many potentially unrelated sites (like someone complaining about msn communities and having them all blocked).
No good can come from this.
Here's a sig for someone...
--
Pennsylvania: Michael Jackson free since 2003!
Yeah, just think of that 1% flat tax that some guys wanted to introduce a long time ago. That could never lead to sky high progressive taxes hovering around the 50% mark.. Oh.. wait!
Aside from the various technical flaws in their approach, which others have already pointed out, the court's action sets a terrible example.
On the bright side, though, perhaps the federal government could finally win the war on drugs simply by requiring state transportation departments to not permit vehicles containing drugs to use any roads maintained by the states. I'm sure that would solve the problem handily.
Tough. If they are they hosting "legitimate" sites as long as their kiddies porn, they get what they deserve. Perhaps they will think twice next time, or at least keep the kiddy porn stuff where it belongs (to /dev/null).
The crime is not at the ISP and access; the "scene" of crime is at the server end where the material is being located.
If banning access to the sites is the primary form of kiddie porn solution, then all Bush would have to do is to ban Saddam from launching his WMD missiles, we don't have to go root out his source materiels.
Can you say the same thing about homeland security?
If we allow some violations of privacy and freedom in return for security, is this not a slipperly slope?
Sure expatriation of people based solely on suspicion is unacceptable to any sane person... but does that mean it isn't being thought about?
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Since most search engines now do images, will they be required to block them? I guess the next step is to have the phone company block calls to porn distributors and the post office to stop delivers for porn, and the highway department to stop drivers from using the road to deliver porn, and FCC to stop porn transmission over radio/ham.... and so on. I hate it when the government goes after the MODE of transport vs the villians. How do these people stay in office?
There are some people that I have had this discussion with and once you start extrapolating into other areas that they didn't think of they back off thier original arguement. Hasn't anyone talked/e-mail/wrote thier representatives explaining this crap to them? ARGH!
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
I think best effort enforcement is the way to go..
Anything stored on a server that has ever had one single image of child pornography stored on it is going to be "blocked" by the FBI eventually anyway. Sure, it's a slippery slope, but it's one we fell off a long time ago. We're just watching the continued erosion from the bottom of the hill.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
I think it sufficient for you to look around at the half dozen or so examples already given.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I was just about to post something along the same lines.
The "slippery slope" argument is nothing more than an appeal to irrational fear, and any person of reasonable intelligence should recognize it as such.
When a bill is proposed that actually crosses the line of common sense, then we should start forming the lynch mob. But we shouldn't allow ourselves to be emotionally manipulated "slippery slope" arguments.
If you want to DoS any site that allows uploading of pictures, here's a fun way to do it.
Funny, I wonder if this will work with URL redirection, like if you use yahoo's little web redirector to visit a porn site? Will yahoo.com be blocked?
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
that they shouldn't be blocking ANYTHING. End organizations (i.e. where you can view the porn, like your house, school, etc.) should be able to control access.
are you suggesting that the STATE decide what content ISP customers can see and what they can't ? what if the Democratic Senator from that state decides that you can't see Republican websites ? or Catholic ones ? or Jewish ones ? yes, child porn is bad. so are a lot of things that are in newspapers, cable TV, and on the radio.
but to give the control of that content to the people RUNNING the network flies in the face of the end-to-end design the Internet was built with.
once you put control within the network, not at its ends, you have a situation where the vested interests (in this case, the state) can decide what is good and what is bad. that, my friend, is worse than ANY child porn you can find.
I believe that these people can't control their fetish (or choose it) so isn't this the most preferable thing? I mean child fetishes are not going to go away once all these sites are closed down or blocked. It is the same reason I believe that prostitutes and brothels should be allowed to operate freely, as it keeps the rape rate down.
Thoughts? It would be interesting to hear what you guys think.
WARNING: This sig does not contain a joke
If PA is so intent on blocking child porn, why don't they fine the USPS for delivering porn?
Everyone knows what this is really about: Control, and the easy way.
Finding bad sites, tracking down some underage porn dealing scumbag, successfull prosecuting him/her in a local venue - that's all a lot of work. In the case of offshore sites, it's difficult if not impossible to nail the foreign owners - and rightfully so since they don't fall under US law (we all know where this ends up).
So, that leaves us with a few solutions:
a) We can tag and nail users who go to these sites. Can anyone who hasn't gotten disturbing mislabeled pictures from kazaa, or shipped to a rauncy site (maybe not one of the ones in question, but bad enough) when surfing warez.
b) We can block the sites. This will almost assuredly end up blocking legitimate sites, being used as a weapon to control internet traffic (oh, that anti-gov't site is unavailable because it shares IP's with an illegal porn site).
c) They can be smarter. I mean, disgusting sites aside, what about freakin' newsgroups? To my knowledge ISP's actually locally cache these things, and on my ISP I've seen some newgroups that blatantly indicate illegal porn (whether they actually contain it, I dunno, but likely they do).
Really, we should be nailing owners as many US-born sites as possible, and then try and find a way to deal with the rest. Simply blocking won't give the same deep-seated satisfaction as slamming some underage pornsite owner is a federal PMITA prison. My-kid-in-bathtub pictures not applying, I'm talking about sites with intent to promote this type of material.
The last question of course is... that do people who view this stuff do? Do they go out and target possible victims? Are they actively damaging young children themselves.
Or, are such sites sufficient to provide their fix of sick fantasy? Or do these sites string them on to sicker, more dangerous activities? I've heard these questions asked by psych-types for a long time, and as of yet I haven't seen anybody who really knows the answer.
How can an ISP be prosecuted for not blocking a child porn site if the site hasn't been legally proven to be a child porn site? How would the state get tips? Are they looking for the sites? If so, when they find them, why not report them to the FBI? I would think this is similar to requiring bookstores to stop selling certain magazines - they'd have to first provide due process that the magazines should be blocked.
A problem with this is unless the ISP's announce a list or warn the site they are blocking, it does risk legal sites being blocked and not knowing it. Unlike the print industry, which knows if shipments are refused or returned, neither legitamite sites nor their attempted viewers would know why the connection didn't work.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Unfortunately, laws like this are likely to get passed in other states as well.
Not necessarily because the legislature doesn't understand how the technology works (although that is often also the case), but because if such a bill is proposed in your state, which politician is going to open himself up to the inevitable "he voted against a bill designed to reduce child pornography" campaign when he runs for re-election?
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
that any server or ISP serves a porn site is tainted and therefore deserves to have everything blocked, because, you know how one bad apple spoils the whole barrel, kinda like Catholic priests who molest little boys.
this again is a ruling done by people that are thechnology-unaware.
Why do they never ask experts about what they think that should be done?
Or should we all go for some chinees-kind of internet, firewalled by the state, censored by the state?
The thing that bothers me the most here isn't that child porn sites are going to be blocked, but IF courts are allowed to tell ISPs that the have to block to web sites of some kind than it is just a matter of time before the forced banning gets out of control.
What if some yahoo gets elected and thinks violence is bad and has all websites containing violence of any kind forcibly banned by court order. What about bad language? What about porn? What about sites about drugs and alcohol?
Hey why not ban every site that this anti-that judge or every site that is anti anything?
You can't just let courts force ISPs to censor things. I hate censorship so much, whatever happened to freedom of speech?
I can see it now: at the ISP: "Well, I'll just take this list of child-porn sites that we keep in the file cabinet, and enter it into the filter."
What ignorant jackasses this court has proven itself to be governed by...
Anyways, I don't imagine this will be a serious problem. Just make the plaintiffs send you a list of all child-porn websites or show you where to get one, and have them show you where to get updates without breaking the law, such as seeking such sites out. Or plead with the court to make you immune while you do said searches. I don't think they'll do so. The court will then realize that this request is impossible for you to fulfill without you breaking the law to do so, and have them throw it out. It's not the USPS's job to make sure I don't order seventeen magazine in a brown wrapper. That responsibility belongs to a government investigative body that oversees the USPS. The same goes for ISPs.
And as for ISPs being liable, didn't the DMCA make that impossible?
Ah, what nonsense. Just because certain people claim something to be 'completely fallacious', it doesn't make it so. While I would agree that asserting a 'slippery slope' as fait accompli is foolish and fallacious, I can't see anything wrong in making the suggestion of a chain of probable causality between current and future events: history tells us that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Although it's certainly rather hyperbolic to start screaming "they're going to take all of our civil liberties away", we should nonetheless pay attention to the smaller, seemingly 'justifiable' misappropriations of power because they *can* be suggestive of a 'slippery slope' - because a propensity to 'bend the rules' in one circumstance provides an indication of a willingness to do so in others.
I get irritated when I see people mindlessly spouting out whatever they may have read without actually putting their mind to work. Though a 'slippery slope' argument may not serve the orator too well, that shouldn't automatically exclude it from consideration.
The Government does this all the time. For example, they could just up and tell cable companies to switch to digital broadcasts without actually specifying a standard. (http://www.fcc.gov/dtv/) Usually it's with the best of intentions. Something tells me however that blocking is not even close to a practical solution. I just wish someone smarter than I can come up with a good way to treat the social issue.
You almost gave me a fucking heart attack.
I read the title, and had this surreal tunnel-vision of a world without internet porn.
Lets just say its not a world I want to live in.
Pennsylvania's attorney general, Republican Mike Fisher, is leading the state's effort, which already has forced Internet providers to block subscribers from at least 423 Web sites around the world.
423 kiddie porn sites?! I hope the Attorney General has his office raided and his computers inspected for that, the man should be in jail. Anyone else would be in jail for that kind of collection.
This is arguably one of the worst pieces of news in a while. Once, we laughed at places like Saudi Arabia for trying to censor the internet. Now we are to have state mandated censorship as well.
Mr. Fisher, your efforts are not appreciated. You conclude that everyone in your state is into kiddie porn and that gives you a right to interfere with the press also known as the internet. It's offensive and unconstitional. Kiddie porn is vile and illegal already, but you are going to have to respect the rights of the rest of us while you catch people who can tell you where the best kiddie porn is. Your monitoring of my web surfing or email is a violation of the fourth amendment. Any restrictions you might place on my web surfing, however well intentioned, are violations of the first amendment. If you have reasonable suspisions backed with evidence you are ready to swear to in a public court of law, then you might be able to look in a particular place at a particular time. You might even be able to watch the web surfing of an individual for a limited time.
In the end, the only way to end the kiddie porn industry is to teach the world to have respect for their fellow man. Children would not be violated if people would not violate each other. Abuse of state power, presumption of guilt, and disrespect for your fellow citizens are all steps in the wrong direction. Aid to countries where this occurs would be a better use of your money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There is no sliperly slope, but you sure did make yourself a nice Straw Man.
....Theta
Slipperly slope requires a chain of deductive arguments where a conclusion is made by skipping a large number of those arguments:
if A then B
if B then C
if C then
The post wasn't even an argument. It was a number of facts and a single question.
Facts:
1. PA is forcing ISPs to block child porn sites.
2. PA ordered ISPs may need to block legitimate sites to acomplish the goals.
Questions:
1. Will ISPs be libal if they don't succeed in blocking all sites sucessfuly.
Its pretty apparent in many of the laws governing technology today that the people to who make and have to enforce the laws really don't have a clue as to how the specific technology works. They are basically at the whim of whomever is trying to push their own agenda, even if that person himself doesn't care/know about the technology.
These politicians are just worried about ideas that sound good and might get them reelected, they could really care less how they are enforced or if they are enforced, just that they were the ones who made the rules.
The PA ISP's need YOU! Make $50/hr scouring the net for kiddie porn!
Sad thing is, they might have to...
Q. Why doesn't PA require the post office to ban ordering of kid pr0n through the mail? Maybe because that's more intuitive and they see how ridiculous it is?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
assuming, of course, that the sites detected are in the states, if they have the technology and methods to detect child pornography, why not simply use this information to crack down on the sites themselves?
perhaps i'm missing something here, but it seems like they're attacking the symptom, rather than the cause.
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
And freedom of speech.
Once you can force a provider to block any content, its just a matter of time before more content is added to the 'list of the day', until even basic speech is blocked.
We are dangerously close to that now. just try to say things that our 'homeland security department' doesn't permit. If you don't believe me, post how to make a nuclear bomb, or a bio hazard, and see how fast your free speech disappears. ( and personal freedom, as you will be taken into custody )
I'm not saying kiddy porn isn't bad, but it sets a bad precedent that will be MUCH broader down the road and we will all suffer.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Think of all the great things this could lead to, you could get the phone company to block calls to your house if the caller has committed certain crimes. You could get postal mail blocked by USPS, FedEx and UPS if coming from a criminal person or company (this means no MS crap!!!).
Although I wonder what ISP the child p..nography dept at the police station will use...
JWall: GUI client for IPTables
Oh, I think you're on to something here. The goverment start requiring blocking all domains that might have child porn, leaving only iraqi domains unblocked, so all child porn sites end up migrating to the underutilized .iq (is pr0n.raises-your.iq registered yet?)...and in the name of all that is decent and family values, we finally have a reason to invade and bomb iraq! oh wait, nevermind.
-- If you can't laugh at yourself, someone else will do it for you.
You're a judge, a DA, or a cop. One day, you become aware that there's a kiddy porn site up.
Should your priority be:
A) Immediately contact the ISP and make sure people can't see that site anymore!
B) Immediately get a warrant, contact the ISP and find out who the hell put the pictures up, so you can put them in jail. This will, of course, cause the pictures to be taken off the internet.
I mean, this is like saying "If someone murders someone in your house, you are now legally obligated to put up a curtain so nobody can see the blood. What? You think that sounds stupid? Aren't you against murder???"
on law enforcement, which has already been proven ineffective, and is thus an embaressment to those who enforce the law.
This punts responsibility to the poor ISP who all government officials can now point their scrawny little finger at while cackling "There's the bad guy" to the voters.
This is actually a quite common tactic and if you examine laws closely you'll find any number of examples.
The fact that this ruling makes no sense, is impossible to comply with, and thus defines every ISP as a child pornographer is beside the point.
Shit rolls downhill.
KFG
When will people realize that "slippery slopes" arguments are, by definition, illogical? Grrrr.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I still can't believe that on our news servers you can find kiddieporn. I value freedom, but not at the cost of children.
nosig today
How would the telephone company implement an order to block, say, terrorist planning conversations?
The telephone company is hereby ordered to block phone numbers of terrorists.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Ironically enough, Salon.com is blocked by my school's proxy filter!
There can be nothing wrong with. I don't think ANY ISP wants child porn or any morally illegal activity running over their network. So why not suggest a little more attention? But what boggles my mind is how dealers of child porn on a large scale are able to get merchant accounts? And use credit cards??? Shouldn't the credit companies with more money then god be forced to police this? Fucking retarded. HOW does someone accept credit cards on a porn site. What a joke. rw
I want a beowulf cluster of the box running this:
"In one extreme case, a single Web site shared its numerical address with 970,411 other sites."
Seriously though, people that are affected by censorship like this, or worse, aren't going to be affected by it. The real offenders are going to be going through open NATs, proxies, etc to get around this. It's only the regular customers and the stupidest of criminals that are affected by censorship.
Content-based filtering seems to be the only thing that would stop users from simply using a 3rd party proxy, nph-proxy or anonymizer. I don't know how well cyber-nanny-whatever works or if it just blocks IPs, but I this this court order is a bit premature in terms of technology.
Of course, if we could just get all the porn sites to include some meta tags...
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
There's a kinky story accessible through this site about two underage kids who fall in love, have sex, and later die. I've read it myself. It's called, "Romeo and Juliet."
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Yes, it does make the ISP liable. And that's a GOOD thing. The BAD thing is that the definition of child porn is way too ambiguous to enforce without the wholesale decimation of purely legal content (adult or otherwise).
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Does Fedex?
How is an ISP any different?
journal from september
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
the court ordered blocking may prevent access to legitimate sites that are hosted on the same server
I'm trying to imagine a context where a 'legitimate' site would be colocated with a child porn site on the same server. If the whoever's running the server knows its content, then they're clearly running a criminal operation and I wouldn't cry if his whole server was pulled. Otoh, if someone posts stuff to geocities, I think it's the responsibility of the host to keep the server clean and the threat of blocking all of their pages makes a strong enforcement tool. It's not that hard for a web operator, even of a large multi user site, to review its contents for illegal material.
All that being said, it *is* a slippery slope. However, the law is pretty clear about what is illegal and what is not.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
So a webserver is blocked, and you're ok with that.
Who tells the isp that they can remove the block when the "child porn" site is removed? I fear that even years later, certain ip addresses will be blocked even after they aren't owned by those same server sites, much less the particular web sites.
Who defines the site as child porn? Does it have to be actually even porn, or involving children, or can the state simply decide that the site is unacceptable and should be blocked? Is there any judicial review involved, or is there some beaurocrat who makes the decision?
At least if the web site itself is shut down, there had to be some judicial review of some kind. With blocking, the web site might not even know to take it to court.
Is there any
Just because reasonable act A might be used an example for unreasonable act B doesn't make A unreasonable; it's B that's unreasonable.
"Slippery slope" encompasses such bogus whining as "We can't let the retailer control his own prices, because TOMORROW HE MIGHT RAISE THEM" and other silliness. It almost always is used to ignore the constraints AGAINST such further action. Gosh, we can't allow some of these posters to BREATHE because they MIGHT take all of our oxygen! Quick, kill them!
For instance, anybody arguing that a ban on child pornography (which already exists at a Federal level) would be extended to cover, oh, political or religious speech that's accepted today, needs to show HOW IT WOULD HAPPEN -- including what would need to be a deliberate and extremely open circumvention of the heart of the 1st Amendment. Child pornography has repeatedly ruled to NOT be protected, as (a) it isn't remotely expressive, and (b) the state has been judged to have a compelling interest in protecting its minors from that sort of exploitation. Political speech and dissent HAS been defended ever since Peter Zenger, the striking down of the Alien and Sedition Act, cases preserving the right to burn the American flag so long as it's your own property, the right of the NY Times to print the Pentagon Papers, et al...
The only free-speech issues here do NOT concern the question of whether or not child pornography can be criminalized, but about the collateral damage inflicted by blocking co-hosted sites.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
In Most (actually all that I am aware of), knowingly downloading and viewing child porn is illegal. How then can an ISP verify that a site contains such material without violating the law? Must they block all sites they receive tips on without verification? If they verify then -they- are violating the law. And since ISP employees are not law enforcement officers, there appears to be no legitimate work around to this. I thought I'd take this opportunity to inform the inhabitabitants of PA that microsoft.com is a kiddyporn site. Block it now. NOW. If you check and I am right then YOU will be a criminal...
I can't make full sense of the other response to the parent post, but the 14th amendment is what makes the other amendments relevant to the states. The other response seems to be under the notion that the 14th amendment wouldn't have been necessary for the other amendments to apply to the states.
It's just like those Democrats to take something perfectly good and trash it.
:)
A few select Senators try to get their twisted bible-belted nazi regime ideas to work in the vision of tring to change things in their own visions.
So which is it? The Democrat baby-sitters or the Republican bible-thumping nazis?
Nice rant, and I do actually agree with the fundamental point that you are making... I do however have a problem with some of what you have to say...
You see, yes, some democrats seem to want to be babysitters for the rest of the country. But if you actually had RTFA, you would have taken note to the following quote:
Pennsylvania's attorney general, Republican Mike Fisher, is leading the state's effort, which already has forced Internet providers to block subscribers from at least 423 Web sites around the world.
Also, you would have noticed that the Center for Democracy and Technology is trying to stop the Pennsylvania govt from doing this. The CDT promotes "democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age."
Granted, there are democrats that want to censor the internet, but there are far more republicans that want to do this. Even worse, the republicans tend to be more likely to use religion in the argument.
So, I am not sure if you were attacking democrats and democratic policy in your post or if you were just talking in general but I hope for the sake of open-mindedness the later is the case...
Instead of stopping the criminals, just make sure some people can't find out about it.
You know, somebody tried to sell my minor green-eyed nephew some illegal substances the other day. I think it's a damn shame and as a taxpayer I demand that police officers should be posted outside every crack house and make sure kids with green eyes are turned away. That will surely put a stop to those illegal activities.
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/
press@attorneygeneral.gov
Sean Connolly is the spokesperson for Penn. A.G. Mike Fisher
His number is: 717-787-5211.
His email address is probably sconnolly@attorneygeneral.gov. I haven't confirmed this however.
Please be polite and express your valid concerns about forcing the ISPs to block the sites rather than going after the sites themselves.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
How do you define kiddy porn? If you're a typical 16-year-old teenager, is it so wrong to want to see naked pictures of girls your own age? I mean, a lot of 16-year-olds are already having sex anyway (except for the abstinent nerds who read Slashdot), so they're already seeing _and_ interacting with naked girls their own age. Wouldn't just seeing naked pictures of them be less bad?
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Why does everyone seem to think that the right to free speech covers everything a body might want to say about anything? Is no one here aware of the history of newspapers in the 1800's getting their type strewn into the street for publishing poorly researched and/or slanderous material? This only became a bad thing when people decided that porn (nudie mags, take your pick) was covered by free speech! I say that it is not!
The Constitution was written to cover political, not private, speech. Speaking out against or for the government and its policies (local to federal) is what is covered by the Constitution. Not John Doe wanting to publish his version of Debbie does Dallas!
Current interpretation of the laws puts us where we are, not the laws themselves. This is why there are bitter partisan fights in congress about who gets assigned to what seat on the Supreme Court (and the lower courts).
You miss the real slippery slope, as well as the fact that we're already well down it. It comes down to one key question:
/. goes right down the tubes. Decide yourself whether that particular part is good or bad.
Does the ISP provide connectivity or content?
If the former, the ISP is responsible only for officially hosted content. Content hosted for users is covered through some sort of Acceptable Usage Practices agreement. But beyond that, the ISP is a pipe, and has no control over the content that flows on that pipe. Someone brought up the issue of the telephone companies screening out terrorist conversations. We all know that's absurd, because the telephone is clearly defined as a carrier, not a content provider.
We are well down the slippery slope of considering the ISP to be a content provider. In this case, the ISP becomes responsible for:
-Any email out of that domain, possibly even incoming. (SPAM?)
-Any content accessable from that domain, be it over web, usenet, finger, gopher, ftp, etc.
-Usenet postings out of that domain.
The moment the ISP ceases to be a carrier anything becomes possible - like Scientology lawsuits to suppress information or root out evil emailers.
Fearfully, one end of this trend is to turn the Internet into Jack Valenti's dream - another distribution medium. Imagine an Internet of big, legally bonded "haves" and ISP/GeoCities-hosted "have-nots". It looks kind of like cable TV, with the big/syndicated networks and the community channels. The ISP/Geocities pages let us delude ourselves into thinking it's still the Internet.
Without a sponsor to put up the bond bucks
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The Salon article brought up Worldcom, but I'm still curious about this.
I live in New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia. My ISP is Comcast (@home, cable modem). Comcast is based in Philadelphia. Does this mean that now those particular sites would be blocked to me, despite me being a resident of NJ?
Now don't get me wrong, I have no desire to see child pornography, but say one of those sites is on the same server as another site I go to. Am I blocked from that site? If I cross the Delaware river and go to PA, I legally have to be blocked, right?
This measure seems overly broad and without real solutions or merit.
This is going to sound sad, but here goes. So, PA wants to keep me from seeing bad things and is forcing my ISP to block these sites? Oh my God! I'm just so happy to have a government that wants to do something totally useless when it comes to protecting me while I surf the web!
Look, in all honestly, I only have a few websites that I ever visit with any regularity. Those sites are:
1. Of Course, Slashdot.
2. 1 Wrestling Dot Com - My Pro Wrestling Fix
3. My Site, Rancho Relaxo - Checking on the site, updating, etc.
4. AnimeFu - Opinions are like Escaflowne DVDs: Everybody Has One...
5. Keeping Up On That Wheaton Kid - Because the Real-Life Wil is much cooler than Wesley...
6. Cartoon Orbit - Their gToons game is neat, and yes, I'm addicted to cartoons.
7. Yahoo! Games - Pinochle and Spades.
That's it. At least once a day, I visit these sites (my own site even less). Sometimes I Google for info and images. But there is one thing that I'm most certainly not sick or stupid enough to go after, and that's child pr0n. Honestly, I don't have to go looking for regular, legal porn, either.
So, my ISP is now going to have to filter out sites I don't even care to think about, let alone visit. Not that I much care, really. Just interesting to know that I'm being protected by a state government that spawned the first ever Secretary of Homeland Security (Tom Ridge, who's only positive achievement as our governer was finally raising the highway speed limit to 65), cost my father his job twice (taking two state hosipitals and making them private), screwed up my student loans (AES/PHEAA is guilty there), can't maintain roads properly...
You get the idea, right?
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
The problem with this is that pornography laws are very different all over the world. For example, in the Netherlands the legal age for participation in porn is 16. So lets say there is a Dutch webserver with pictures of 16 year olds. This is perfectly legal, and the Dutch ISP has no reason not to allow it. A site like this would be labeled as kiddie porn in the US, and any non-porn content on the server could be blocked as well.
Hello Sean,
n ternet _filters/index.html
I read this article today and it disturbes me quite a bit.
http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2003/02/19/i
I'm curious how the Penn. A.G. office (or whomever was in charge) came to the conclusion to force the ISPs to block the sites instead of going after the sites themselves?
I am the co-owner of a small ISP in Missouri and if MIssouri were to issue a judgement of this magnitude could put us out of business. We don't have the money or resources to implement such a solution.
Not only that but I don't want to be the one that has to research which sites are and aren't child porn. Especially since many of these sites probably require a fee before you can gain access. This is not my job. I am a programmer by trade not a police officer.
It seems to me that the wrong people are being penalized. Would you fine the phone company if you received a phone call with pornographic sounds of children? No, you would have the police find out who made that call and bust them. The phone company was only the messenger. It's not their job to screen your calls.
Theoretical Scenario:
If I was evil and a competiting ISP, I could pay someone to setup a child porn site. Then I could immediately complain to the A.G. Office that such and such ISP was allowing child porn through the line. That ISP would then be hit with heavy fines.
The possibilities of something like that happening are slim, but it has now been setup for something like that to happen.
I left a message with your secretary. I would greatly appreciate it if you could return my call and just make sure that I'm understanding the situation correctly. Also, if I can be of any assistance to the Penn. Attorney General's office, I am always more than happy to help out.
Thanks again,
personal info withheld for this posting.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The best way to block the child porn is to block the server. If your company or site was suddenly blocked wouldn't you want to know why. This is the best encouragement for system administrators to make sure their server is clean. Any sys admin who is hosting child porn knowingly is probably using the server for several other illegal purposes as well, such as the Russian Mafia.
Yes? Why, you must be evil!!! Have you ever seen yourself naked? You compound your sins.. I hope the Lord has mercy on you and does not cast you into the HELL in which you truly belong!!!
A common theme running through these comments has been that the court/state should provide a list of child porn sites to be blocked. This is just not realistic for two reasons: 1) Due to the migratory nature of these types of sites, any published list would be outdated even before it's released, and 2) such lists would be "requestable" under FOIA terms, which means any jackoff OUTSIDE Pennsylvania would have a free list of places to get spank material.
I have a 2-year-old daughter, and the thought of anyone getting off on a picture of her is absolutely revolting to me. I don't have any answers as to how to stop the horrendous nature of child porn, but somehow this just doesn't feel like its the right way to go about stopping it.
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
I agree with the question everyone else is asking. Just how are they going to block the sites? I can just imagine an ISP blocking sites based on words found on the pages. If that happened, even Slashdot would be blocked. Look what words have already been said in this thread. Child porn, naked, kiddie, and the list goes on. I don't see any possible way to block those kinds of sites at this time. Sure, the ISP can have a list. But the sites on that list will change. And while who ever is in charge of making the list is putting together a new one, users WANTING those sites will have already found new ones. It's a vicious cycle, and I don't think forcing ISPs to 'block' sites is going to help AT ALL.
nt
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Where do we draw the line in the sand, This is slashdot and many people here are from the US, but we also have a lot of people from other countries. How do they view this. In Holland, at 15 your an adult and can be in porn if you like. Is this a problem? Where did we pick the magical age of 18 and do we have the right to impose it on everyone? I personally enjoy the look of a mature woman, which is why my wife is 4 years older than I am and I find her sexy every day I wake up. But what if I was 17, and I took pictures of my 17 year old girlfriend, do I go to jail? you can't expect a 17 or 16 year old boy or girl to want to look at people much older than themselves. hmmm... and then there is this issue of men of my age looking at young girls. This really pisses me off, but I have a daughter, so maybe my view is biased. See that is the problem in this country. Were always so gung ho about picking a random moral standard and forcing everyone to follow it. We get pissed off over child porn, but then I see, we don't seem to respect our own principles in our own homes. I often drive my daughter and her friends to drop them off at the movies, or the mall, and I see these parents who let their 13 year old daughters leave the house in outfits that would make me blush to have seen my wife wearing in college. mid drift shirts and belly button rings, thong underwear very vissible. This pisses me off, but you don't see me running out to make a law against mid drift shirts, or belly button piercings, although I feel this causes more rapes to happen than any child porn we can imagine. I guess my point is, that life is subjective, and we must be careful what laws we start throwing around willy nilly, a friend of mine in college became a nudist when she got married, she has kids and a husband and has been happily married for 15 years, should I look down on her, because it is not the lifestyle I chose. Let me reitterate, men who take erotic pictures of children should die a horrible death, but I just don't want our laws suddenly starting to infringe on the rights of the innocent, and I fear vague rulings such as these could result in that.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
The "American" argument is not that the Constitution always represents "right", but rather that the constitution is the nation's highest law. When a government violates or ignores the laws that define and limit it, then you no longer have a constitutional government. If such a government still pretends to democracy, at best you are left with mob rule. And no matter how you look at it, unconstitutional governments of any type represent tyranny and are to be AVOIDED.
I oppose any such tyranny.
Now with that said, it is still possible to CHANGE the (us) constitution, and this may represent a compelling reason to do so (though I think not). Changing the constitution is however a difficult process, so many legislators ignore this possibility and create the "law of the day" to appease the mobs. Those of us that know better quickly point out the foul, and in due course the courts point it out as well.
Observers that point out that the PA law is probably unconstitutional are simply stating the obvious. A more interesting discussion would be along the lines: Should we change the constitution so that we can restrict X.
As an American, I am frustrated that our legislators so rarely explore this option.
In a way, this seems similar to the Verizon case because it puts a middle entity between two clearly guilty parties, and burdens them with the responsibility for some "Bad Thing".
In this case, the people who produce and consume kiddie porn are in clear violation of the law. I say "go after them", and don't waste resources in a futile attempt to make sure nobody can see the kiddie porn.
State AG's could go after the smaller pool of large backbone carriers and get them to filter offending material at the IP level, but that would be more expensive for the states to pursue (I beleive). Instead, pick on the zillions of smaller ISPs
Anyway, expect p2p traffic to get this treatment first, because kiddie porn doesen't put a dent in AOLTW's or Sony's bottom line.
Of course. But if based upon the notion that there's something inherently wrong with the basis of act A, then I think it's reasonable to extrapolate to the possibility of act B. Note that it was the use of 'this sort of approach' that was mooted in the story as being at the top of a slippery slope -- in other words, misguided legislation affecting ISPs for the sake of morality stands the chance of leading to other such measures being taken in future, for other notions of morality. And, I'm afraid, in my opinion there's *no* absolute standard of morality -- to say "kiddy porn is inherently evil" is as subjective as to say "drugs are bad" or "women shouldn't be allowed to vote". Ah, now that might rattle a few cages...
Alcohol, caffeine, contact sports, meat . . .
Bad language, child play, gasoline, uneducational toys, and anything spicy. Abortion is also illegal. But, then again so is pregnancy, if you don't have a license.
-- Lenina Huxley, Demolition Man
Yeah, right.
It's not fair to have a Whack-A-Mole policy it's just going to have eventual problems in the future as those IPs become useless.
No ISP world wide will knowingly host CP, they will lose connect from their upstream providers.
Frankly most of the problem isn't a problem. Everything that can be done is already being done by hard working ISP people around the globe. Warez and CP sites tends to give themselves away to anyone who actually reads the system logs or pays attention to what is getting the most hits. If some odd URL on your system is starting to get a LOT of traffic your gonna take a look at that page to see what's such a big deal. If your smart you've asked your boss and two or three other co-workers to sit in on the site check. Just to be safe. It's sadly no shock to me that courts and Republicans politicos are clueless about how things are actually done. Never trust anyone with an agenda.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
The phone company may eventually become liable, if text-to-speech data mining becomes reality. Check out this article by Lincoln Stein:
/ na 0303g/index.html (beware the slashdot space)
http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/s=2445
Particularly this paragraph:
******
To me, the IAO [Information Awareness Office, www.darpa.mil/iao/] is scary enough on its own. The Web page (http://www.darpa.mil/iao/programs.htm) lists, without comment, a series of mysterious projects. In addition to the Total Information Awareness System, there is the Human ID at a Distance project, which is presumably a system for clandestine face and voice recognition. The Effective, Affordable, Reusable Speech-to-Text (EARS) system will be useful for converting intercepted telephone conversations into text that can be databased and mined for suspicious activity, and the Translingual Information Detection, Extraction, and Summarization (TIDES) system will likely be used for translating foreign language emails. But what do we make of the "Bio-Surveillance" project, "FutureMap," and "Babylon"?
*******
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I hope everyone will read my post here:
4 422
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=54488&cid=534
I later thought about overseas incidents where U.S. has no jurisdiction. I would hope at a minimum the A.G. office should provide a free list of these oversea sites. Ultimately it's not the responsibility of the ISP to be a police officer.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
This whole blocking thing is against the philosophy of the internet, sharing and freedom of knowledge and whatever, porn pics, kiddie porn.
Im not a phedophile but i and many ppl think this is wrong. Find some other way to get rid of them. Anyway whos gonna listen to us. Stupid system.
This is an incredibly naieve & unrealistic viewpoint that really should have no creedence outside of a language arts classroom.
...and they will go the next step because the first won't quite work.
The sad fact of the matter is that US law IS the slippery slope. Point it in a certain direction and it will keep on going in that direction because that is what it's designed to do. Once something is tolerated, that opens the door for the "next thing" to be tolerated. And it will happen unless the judiciary chooses to step in.
If we're really unlucky, the judicary will rubber stamp this and it will become a part of the cannon of officially accepted legislative behaivor. Then, politicans will really get working to go one step further.
That's the key element. Liberty is at odds with security. That will always give politicians incentive to trash civil liberties in the name of solving some public policy crisis (real or imagined).
Or, put more simply: the slippery slope has been fallen down before. You can look to slavery and Jim Crow as painfully obvious examples of this.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Your lawmakers can only do what you let them get away with, but protesting reasonable laws because they resemble unreasonable ones, and making ludicrous "slippery slope arguments just undermines your cause.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Sometimes I wonder if (the) Government and the courts have any engineers woking for them. These politicians are uninformed people who show their stupidity and ignorance every time they pass laws like this. How many times has politics gotten in the way of technology? Millions of times, I'm sure! This is yet another example of the Lawmakers saying: "Don't confuse me with (the) FACTS!"
it's legal in pakistan to own a fully automatic ak47 (substitute another country if i'm wrong). it is generally illegal in the united states. if someone in pakistan ships one to my home address, what will happen?
is the shipping company liable? are they required to open the package? will the government open it when it first arrives in the us? once i recieve it, did anyone but me break the law?
i'm curious what the answers are, but i'd start by saying follow the analogy.
char *mySig;
How does this effect national ISP's like Earthlink, AOL, etc.. After all, it would be fairly difficult to block content in just one state, it'd be much easier to do it nationwide.
Also, What if a person in another state is dialing a number (that happens to be in PA or serviced by a PA IS)? Do they still have to block sites he requests?
-Jeremiah
I work at an ISP and I can tell you this is the worst way possible to go about it. You don't need to remove one persons rights to protects anothers. Offer information on the who and the how of blocking kiddie porn sites and we'll all do it voluntarily. Using our network for illegal purposes is a strict violation of our TOS, if a user wants to see one of the sites he can call me up and justify it.
Blocking Kazaa is censorhsip, blocking child pornography is citizenship.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
why pull out the roots when you can simply snip the leaves? i feel sorry for the poor ISPs who are constantly going to have "snip leaves" as they pop back up somethere else.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
... video rentals are forced to not make snuff videos avaible. This is different HOW EXACTLY ?
Sorry, I got your point, but I'm not sure why you got modded up to 5, because you're missing the real issue here...
You can't block illegal sites by IP number or DNS name 'cause they CHANGE. Instead, you have to use content filters, and therein lies the problem - you're eliminating every site with the words "kids" and "breasts" together... including the BBC, the Global Gourmet, ABCNews, etc.
-T
When lawmakers are dictating how to utilize technology without prior working knowledge were setting up to self distruct.
I'm assuming at least some of you have automatically harvested .jpgs from alt.binaries.pictures.* or a.b.p.erotica.*...there seems to be, at least on cursory inspection, at least as much kiddiepr0n on Usenet as there is on the WWW, if not more, and it's a lot harder to eliminate; while there are entire ngs dedicated to it, there's no reason pics can't be ECP'd to a bunch of legitimate groups too, just to provide wider propagation and availability. Prodigy had an idea with blocking all binary groups (for different reason), but still, this seems like a perfect way to just endrun the law and go wild with the CP...whats PA going to do, ban all of Usenet?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Don't tell me that if this holds up that the RIAA and MPAA won't be next in line with a list of sites to be blocked -- starting with all download sites for P2P, ripping, copying and related software. How long before download.com is only a memory. Remember that there is isn't anything out there that somebody doesn't like made available.
I don't support child porn at all where real children are involved, but this isn't the way to attack the problem. The politicians and courts are too much like the kings of olde, they just command it to be done and expect someone else to work out the real details and problems.
[sarcasm] Isn't that nice of them. Reminds me of some liberals I know whose attitude is, "Now that I've identified the problem for you, you go fix/pay for it."[/sarcasm]
The scary thought is how a provider (e.g. AT&T) which hosts thousands of personal pages could have the enire site blocked because of one misbehaving user, even on First Amendment protected materials.
This needs to be stopped here!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
ISPs are not common carriers. However, this is a case of where the government is trying to "legislate the internet" to their gain. Ephemeral as it is, and boundaryless, it definitely looks like a nice ripe fruit for the picking by your average clueless politician for their personal gain.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
ISP's are providing a service medium to consumers, it is up to our law enforcement to enforce child porn laws, not our ISP's. This is just as ludicrous as asking FedEx or UPS to prevent the delivery of child porn DVD's.
Quick side question - what's the age of majority in Denmark? I believe I saw in another post that it was 16. If so (or in another country where it is 16), what about pr0n with 16 or 17 year olds? That would qualify as kiddie-pr0n in the US, but not your country - so grandparent's question still stands...
-T
Or some other cracker-ass state, like Mississippi? Using the same legal "logic" (sic), couldn't they require the same thing of ISPs regarding their obscenity laws generally?
HA, you say--how likely is that? Very, if this crap is upheld. Check out the major vendors of good ol' adult porn tapes and DVDs in the US--most of them have a "will not ship" database of states and/or zip codes that they will not ship to for fear of transgressing local "community standards", that ridiculous test for obscenity foisted upon the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave by our great Supreme Court. And I'm talking MAINSTREAM porn, not some bestiality tape--you, know, "Anal Coeds" or "Deep Throat Debutantes".
Everybody uses slippery slope arguments, and everybody criticizes them when they are used by someone you disagree with. But there is little question that this is a very dangerous, broad-reaching precendent that needs to be undone.
In case you didn't know, many KP sites are free webhosting accounts, pics dumped and then to stay up until it dies of itself (admin delete / bandwidth saturation). Unless you feel like signing up with a CC should be the only way to host a website, fine... Otherwise, might just perm-ban geocities etc. already, I'm pretty sure there's at least one illegal site there at all times, each with an average lifetime of *hours*.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
We have to note that Child Porn is different from all other sorts of crimes - for example, viewing info about how to murder or how to make your homebred dirty bomb is not a crime, although actually doing it would be.
However, with Child Porn, the crime is having or viewing the information *PER SE*. So blocking Child Porn sites are actually preventing the crime ITSELF - it is similar to libelous comments - the information IS the crime, so I don't see a problem censoring them.
So, while censoring ordinary porn sites, sites that teaches you how to make bombs and terrorist sites are bad, censoring child porn sites is actually GOOD.
...or is the list of wanted jobs for pedos now going to include 'ISP operator'?
"Here's a free list of KP sites for you, Mr. Operator. Don't let your customers see this."
"Suuuuuuure... no problem, just keep them coming. I'll just surf a little before I add these to the list."
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...The ISP is suppose to know where these sites are to begin with. Further, if we know where they are, why are we not going after them? "ok block the ip of the Kiddy porn site, but don't leave it up to us to shut them down!"
Well, here's a one-liner in Perl that'll do it:
I finally spoke with Sean.
The truth is that this is a cooperative effort with ISPs. The problem is not so much "child porn sites" as it is "child porn sites overseas".
Sean said the A.G. Office sends an informal letter to ISPs asking them to block access to a particular site in question.
Worldcom has been the only one that threw it back at them and asked for a court order, so they gave them one.
It sounds to me like this isn't nearly as bad as the Salon article makes it out to be.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
http://freenetproject.org
The Custom Mary
Am I the only one who has a problem with the terms "slippery slope" and "child pornography" being in the same sentence?
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
Normally I am 100% against any form of censorship. However this is very different from laws such as CDA and COPA for 2 reassons 1. what constitues child porn is clearly defined and 2. possesion of such material is already illegal (as opossed to "normal" porn which adults can legally have and distribute). W hile I think we can all agree that eliminating child porn from the internet (and world in general) would be a good thing my concern is are isps only responseable for blocking the 425 sites the attorney general found (which would be a ressonable order) or are they expected to block all child porn which would likley be impossible
Oh get off the high horse. Just because something is deprecated does not make it wrong. HTML v3.2 is going to last us a long, long time because it is a) ubiquitous b) easy to understand c) easy to implement. It is becoming the HTML people "learn in school," the vulgate language.
And you know what? It doesn't hurt anything. The page downloads fast enough, and it renders nicely. Slashdot is an informative, easy to use web site, not a pretty one. And that's the way we likes it.
(oh, and i think the style strip is due to some ancient browser vulnerability that was used to make goatse.cx pop up. you forget that just because you don't use the cool new features of CSS to do ungodly ugly things doesn't mean others won't. and CSS is still so damned complicated and varied by implementation that it's probably more beneficial to stip it out than it is to learn how to clean it.)
Hey freaks: now you're ju
For those highly interested, CDT released a study [pdf] today on the Penn. law that is the subject of this Salon article.
.com, .net, and .org sites are hosted on web servers with 50 or more domain names - meaning that many sites might be vulnerable to this form of IP address blocking. "Web Sites Sharing IP Addresses: Prevalence and Significance" is available at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/ip-sha ring/
We argue that the law is unconstitutional and unwise. The statute has been used hundreds of times in recent months to force Pennsylvania ISPs to block access to web sites deemed child pornography, but without any notice to the users who are blocked or any meaningful chance to challenge the determinations.
The law raises interesting constitutional and technical problems. Because ISPs respond to the Penn. orders by blocking access to an IP address, they inevitably block any innocent domains with the same address. Also, this approach -- now being considered by other states -- scales very poorly (~400 notices from Pennsylvania in six months, multiply that by a couple of years and 50 states and dozens of countries and you're looking at a lot of routing table exceptions to maintain.)
Ben Edelman at Harvard's Berkman Center released a related report this week. Ben has found that two-thirds of all
More info about the Penn. law and CDT's report "The Pennsylvania ISP Liability Law: An Unconstitutional Prior Restraint and a Threat to the Stability of the Internet" can be found at http://www.cdt.org/speech/
Wrong! They do not provide the list. I know, because I asked for it and they did not provide it. No domain list. No IP list. Nothing. If you got such a list why don't you prove it. 423 items would fit nicely in a Slashdot comment.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
970,412 domains on one IP are just parked domains at 209.67.50.203 (futuresite.register.com). I doubt there will be any kiddie porn here. The next level has 822,079 domains at 64.225.154.175 also apparently parked with "Web Page Under Construction". Then 206,255 domains are at 216.34.94.186, and again, parked. The top 9 are either parked or ambiguous.
Only when you get down to number 10 with 123,011 domains do you get something other than parked ... they are for sale. Check out the full lists about half way down on http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/ip-sha ring/. Also, check out the graph just below there. Another example of natural power law distribution.
Those sites do beat my 22,484 domains running on one IP. But then, these aren't second level domains; they are third level, so I guess they don't count.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
OK, let me get this straight.
Case 1:
An ISP hosts a spammer. We all act furious. Thank goodness for the RBL, and other stuff like that. Sure, legitamite (sp?) email may be blocked, but that will just spur the ISP to take action.
Case 2:
An ISP hosts KIDDIE PORN. The government orders that ISPs block access to that site. Sure, legal sites might be blocked, but that will just spur the ISP to take action.
WTF is the difference? OK, the government mandate is a little annoying. But other than that, there is almost none. And believe me, KIDDIE PORN is a lot more harmful spam.
This seems like a perfectly reasonable solution. Legit sites will move their servers, the ISPS will be forced to boot the kiddie porn, or become kiddie porn only. Actually, seems like an ideal solution. So put away the knee-jerk and move on.
I once voted to ban dog shit in oatmeal cookies.
It was voted down because they said that might lead to removing chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, and other good things.
So we still eat our dog shit cookies.
I agree. Let them die a horrible death, and let the legal process take a bit of responsability. A lot of this seems to me like the legal process is as p*ssed off as the rest of us, but droping the ball just as they get to the goal line with stupid laws.
When I went to art school I learned that while most everyone there is "different", most of the people there are all "different" in the same way.
The same applies to slashdot, you fight so blindly in the name of "privacy" you don't seem to care about what it is you are fighting about. I wouldn't care if a server that was storing child pornography was blown up by a helicopter. Who cares if they had other pages on it, people can find new hosts.
Jeez, how important are privacy laws if they're the only laws that are left.
How do you know they don't already do that? How do you think they catch most of the people they do.
The slipperly slope in this case is that ISPs will be made ever more responsible for the content they carry. But the phone company and the post office aren't responsible for what their infrastructure is used to deliver. Why should the web be a special case?
Not sure about the telecom industry, but the USPS already *does* have regulations about what can and cannot be sent through the mail.
Not sure about the telecom industry, but the USPS already *does* have regulations about what can and cannot be sent through the mail.
Yes, but if the regulations are breached, the sender is liable, not the carrier. The carrier isn't supposed to know or care what's in packages in most cases. That's the difference in this case, the new law proposes to make the ISP responsible for the traffic it merely carries, not originates.
Yes, but if the regulations are breached, the sender is liable, not the carrier.
That's because of two reasons:
1) the carrier was proactive in establishing rules, and
2) the carrier is run by the federal government, and therefore obligated to enact regulations upholding federal laws
Any industry that's in danger of being regulated needs to seriously consider being proactive about self-regulation. It stands to reason that an industry that does nothing to address concerns about violating ethics or social mores is going to find rules imposed upon it.
I'd respond, but I can't make ad hominem attacks unless I know who the hominem is.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
It is bad, but filtering and censoring is not the answer. Go after the individual or the site itself. If it is not doing anything illegal, then leave it be. They are right about the slippery slope. I wonder why PennsylChina, err, Pennsylvania decided that. What's it like there? Do they have more Mormons than Utah or something?